AAO Phoenix 2012 – Day 3: A tale of 2 weather systems

Posted on 27th October 2012

I kid you not, this is the weather in Phoenix. It’s hard to beleive it is almost November – I dread to think what it’s like here in summer. In fact it’s hard to believe it’s on the same planet heated by the same sun. Fortunately for my patients (unfortunately for my tan), I’ve been inside all day in darkened rooms listening to eye lectures.

More retinal stuff this morning, but at a much more civilised 10am (I managed to sleep until 7.30 today which means I’m finally getting into Phoenix time with only 2 days left). It was titled ‘Things you don’t want to miss’ and included some quite scary case histories – always good to stop you being complacent. That was 2 hours long so a break for lunch before more on optic nerves where the focus was on differentiating between glaucoma and other types of optic nerve disease. Interesting and useful but 2 hours felt like 4.

To round out the day I spent some time looking at epiretinal membranes (ERM) which are areas of thickening on the retina that can impair vision (kind of like hard skin on the back of the eye). They are quite common and we use the OCT to find see them and monitor them. Many of you will have these in your eyes that we may have told you about. I’m not quite sure we got the whole story about them, the lecturer seemed to miss out some things that I think are quite important when talking about ERM and said some things that I’m not sure are quite 100% correct. Nonetheless, some useful points to bring back.

I went to the supermarket for a few bits and bobs and ‘went native’ by buying some Twinkies. If you don’t know what they are, they are one of the least natural food products you can possibly imagine – however I quite like them and it made me feel very American to buy them. I blended right in with my pasty skin and funny accent…

PS. My wife tells me it’s snowing in parts of Edinburgh which is frankly impossible to comprehend in this heat.

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